Whew!!!! Am I glad I am an amateur. I go by the sound of instruments and not ppg. I do not know if ppg on arrangers make for better sounds as I don't know everything a ppg incorporates in their sound or end result. I do know that the X1 has "nuances" in some of their instrumentation that others don't have. Or maybe it is in their adjustments "attack" "sustain", etc maybe it is in my ears only. But the violin can be, with proper touch and after touch, very sad. And the blowed sax can come very very close to a Kenny G sax. And blowsaxes is the perfect "Auld Lang Syne" sax if I ever heard one.

I don't know a lot of technical stuff and probably will never use the X1 to its full potential. But I will use it to "my" fullness which no other keyboard I've seen allows me to do.

Hopefully you find your answers, but will they really indicate quality of instrumentation beyond the ears? Does 128ppq indicate the sound will be better than 96ppq.

As for me. I am not sure, nor would I buy on the ppg. I bought on a number of X1 users raving about the X1. I bought. I won - in my ears at least.

Really is it this old amateur or do the solo sounds of the X1 have a nuance in their sounds that others don't, and does the touch and after touch enhance the nuances beyond other arrangers. To me they do. And the end result of the best keyboard is that which, on an individual level, each of us enjoy.

The 'bottom line' is how the keyboard sounds and styles sounds to you personally. Some people may not even notice, hear (or even care) about the difference in timimg resolution between 480ppq and 96 ppq. I originally asked this question because I had noticed that both songs and styles originally recorded on higher resolution hardware sequencers (480 ppq) and then converted to my Technics KN5000 sequencer (96 ppq) sounded slightly altered and lacked the pizzaz and spark of the original recording . These are subtle differences in timing that some people wouldn't notice but I did because I was the one who layed down the original keyboard tracks in the first place.

Irregardless, I do think that advancements made in timing resolution is a good thing and that we must be aware that different arranger keyboard sequencers have dirferent specs in regards to "timing resolution". It's very important to realize when you import (convert) styles and songs from other sources that the successful result of your conversion is partly dependent on your sequencer's 'timing resolution' to capture all the nuances of the source song or style.

Les, I don't disagree with you that it is the end result that is important. And indeed, the sound quality is not related to the ppq resolution.

However, as Scott has indicated above, low resolution of the sequencer could be a serious limitation, depending on what you are doing with the instrument. Obviously, you can't fault one for trying to make an informed decision before making a commitment to a new instrument (and to spending significant sums of money).

Putting that aside, there is a curiosity factor, of trying to understand what makes the X1 styles as good as they are, and whether there is any inherent limitation in other keyboards from playing styles as well as well as X1.

With that, I have another question to the X1 users and dealers: As I understand, the main advantage of the X1 styles is their use of the grooves. Aside from the grooves in the instrument's ROM, are there any external grooves which are available on the market? How easy is it to include those in the styles? I presume that there is a flash RAM memory area which stores grooves, which could in theory use third party grooves. Is that true?